Related papers: Chukchi Myths perspective on Special Relativity
The special theory of relativity has fundamentally changed our views of space and time. The relativity of simultaneity in particular, and the theory of relativity as a whole, still presents significant difficulty for beginners in the…
In this article, we argue that the theory of special relativity, as formulated by Einstein, is a philosophical rather than a scientific theory. What is scientific and experimentally supported is the formalism of the relativistic mechanics…
Many professional physicists do not fully understand the implications of the Einstein equivalence principle of general relativity. Consequently, many are unaware of the fact that special relativity is fully capable of handling accelerated…
In the standard cosmological theory one uses the Einstein concepts of space and time as were originally introduced for the special theory of relativity and the general relativity theory. According to this approach all physical quantities…
Einstein based his special theory of relativity on two postulates: (a) physical laws appear the same in all inertial frames, and (b) the speed of light in vacuum is an observer-independent constant. However, it is already known that the…
This paper constitutes a background to the paper 'Quantum mechanics as "space-time statistical mechanics"?', arXiv:quant-ph/0501133, presented previously by the author. But it is also a free-standing and self-contained paper. The purpose of…
Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
In a previous work we have shown that the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment in vacuum is deeply connected with the notion of time. The same is true for the the postulate of constancy of the two-way speed of light in vacuum in…
In this article, we present several apparent paradoxes of special relativity and their respective solutions. These paradoxes have appeared since the advent of relativity in 1905, and in fact they are never paradoxes. From a didactic point…
The Einstein postulates assert an invariance of the propagation speed of light in vacuum for any observer, and which amounts to a presumed absence of any preferred frame. The postulates appear to be directly linked to relativistic effects…
In a comparison of the principles of special relativity and of quantum mechanics, the former theory is marked by its relative economy and apparent explanatory simplicity. A number of theorists have thus been led to search for a small number…
A modern elementary introduction to special relativity for advanced school children or first-year university students, in Russian. I try to demonstrate that relativity does not contradict common sense; on the contrary, it follows from…
Double Special Relativity theories are the relativistic theories in which the transformations between inertial observers are characterized by two observer-independent scales of the light speed and the Planck length. We study two main…
We compare the results obtained by interpreting some fundamental relativistic experiments from the point of view of two alternative theories: Einstein's special relativity theory and the Lorentz-Poincare theory admitting the existence of a…
The theory of special relativity can be generalized by means of a new principle called Conservation of Information. This allows a derivation of the constancy of the velocity of light with respect to moving frames, and, consequently, of…
We present three natural but distinct formalisations of Einstein's special principle of relativity, and demonstrate the relationships between them. In particular, we prove that they are logically distinct, but that they can be made…
Henri Poincare's work on mathematical features of the Lorentz transformations was an important precursor to the development of special relativity. In this paper I compare the approaches taken by Poincare and Einstein, aiming to come to an…
A century after its formulation by Einstein, it is time to incorporate special relativity early in the physics curriculum. The approach advocated here employs a simple algebraic extension of vector formalism that generates Minkowski…
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education,…